SONGSBREW

Feature Story

Drowning in Sound

Music abundance.

In our last newsletter, we began to think about the vast amount of music we now have access to, likening it to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Which led us to thinking - are we drowning in sound?

We’ve never had more or easier access to music than we do now. We have algorithms selecting music faster than any DJ you’ve ever enjoyed on the radio. Autoplay loops, hundreds of automated personal playlists per week, new releases every day, New Music Fridays, over 100 music streaming services, and in 2024, 4.8 trillion streams.

However, we are also looking beyond your personal music streaming scope here. We have music in public spaces, Shorts, Reels, and TikTok, those ultra-catchy 10-30 second bursts of music. Endless background playlists, focus music, lo-fi, or ambient noise. Maybe some sleep music, repeat track consumption (leaving that new gem on repeat).

However, there is a contradiction: it works out when the 4.8 trillion streams are split among about 2 billion people with free or paid music subscriptions, resulting in only about 6.6 songs per day, which seems insignificant.

You can’t possibly be overwhelmed with just six songs. So maybe it isn’t personal consumption volume, it is presence.

Music as Muzak?

There was a time, and maybe this is still the way you do it. You’d need to give music your attention. Through the speakers of the first radio, with limited stations. The flip of a record, the rewinding of a tape, and the use of CDs and minidisc players required hands-on attention. So you’d naturally be tuned in; it took effort to do it, and listening intently was the purpose. It was the action.

MP3 music players began to change the game and shape us, preparing us for the modern era of musical abundance. You’d still have limited room, so track selection mattered. Now? You have 100+ million songs, unlimited space, and unlimited data. If you'd like, music can occupy no space at all and serve as the background to your day. Beautiful, limitless, frictionless. Impactless, forgettable.

And that is just personal music. The stuff that moves you is buried under hundreds of other tracks that you can hear while doing anything else. Is it too much of a good thing?

To the point that it’s become Muzak. Once personal. Now piped in. You picked the service just like you picked the playlist, and now it just… is. There, but never noticed. Filling silence, but never asking for your attention.

Until the elevator dings, and you realise you didn’t hear a single song.

If everything is noise, what is music?

Being realistic, we love the convenience and price of streaming services. Music, movies, magazines… Get what you love delivered when you want it. With abundance comes high rates of music discovery, new artists making their way to your ears, and the ability to share a single song with a link in no time at all. We can still build playlists, decide on running order, and listen how we want.

We don’t need to reject the abundance; we can work with it differently. We can adopt a more interactive and selective approach. When we can listen to anything, anywhere, anytime, we need to start hearing what we are listening to.

Rather than drowning in sounds, we can be more intentional with our listening, learning to swim in the rich waters in the best way that suits us. And if that is raising your hands up, and being washed away with playlists and too much, perfect.

If, on the other hand, it is about something more than listening for the sake of background noise. Let it be deliberate track selection, let it be regular silence, let it be listening to nothing for days until a song comes to you that you want to press play on.

Perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at your consumption and ask if you're truly connected to what you’re consuming. Or, have you been caught in the riptide of too much and need some peace on the shore for a while to get back to precisely what it is about music that you love in the first place?

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.

(He probably didn’t account for this much music, though.)

The Essentials

Your Catch Up

The Playlist Edit 

Music Discovery

This week, we are doing something a little different. Instead of single tracks, here are three albums for you to sit with. Love them, hate them, it doesn’t matter, just sit a while.

A Final Note

Until next time,